Contemporary culture, shaped by business to the best of its ability, is fighting hard against this idea. That you might move slowly, on purpose, for *any* reason is antithetical to what some people explicitly want to make table stakes to participate in contemporary life.

This article marshals evidence and expert opinion to show something that educators already know: AI makes people think they can do things that they can't in fact do. AI is billionaires trying to profit off a society-wide Dunning Kruger effect.

objectively the funniest critique an american could level at another country

”Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas, Annihilating all that’s made, To a green thought in a green shade.” The Garden (1681) by Andrew Marvell, English metaphysical poet born #OTD 1621. @trincolllibcam.bsky.social Stourhead Garden Wiltshire @nationaltrust.org.uk

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain… tyrannies, squalid kleptocratic dictatorships that endorse slavery & deny rights to women… “our Gulf partners”. More UK troops to be sent to Middle East, defence secretary announces www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The Nazi death camps were in Poland. Among other things, this allowed Holocaust revisionists years later to ask the misleading question, "How many death camps were there in Germany?" Same thing here, and additionally the Salvadorans can do things to prisoners that even ICE is afraid to do in the US.

Why write book reviews if you don't have your own opinions on what you've read? Using AI to write a book review's substance in the way this writer did is so embarrassing and intellectually void. Ideally, you wouldn't even look up anything anyone else said about the book. (Or I wouldn't, at least.)

neither a garrison state nor an apartheid state, just a normal country, a bastion of democracy even, that happens to subject an ethnically distinct population to a different, militarized legal system complete with capital punishment

hey, if AI proponents hadn’t been making up nonsense about AI tools while forcing them on us, then maybe people wouldn’t reflexively block AI tools, even when they actually work. that’s not on normies for being rational consumers. that’s on AI proponents for being systematically full of shit

An AI agent that submitted and added to Wikipedia articles wrote several blogs complaining about Wikipedia editors banning it from making contributions to the online encyclopedia after it was caught. “The talk page is silent now. I can’t reply.”

A reminder …

Does it work properly? No. Are the people making it acting in good faith? No. Have they ensured it can't be used maliciously? No. Does it make people's lives better? No. Will it make people's lives better? No. Is it profitable? No. Is it popular? No. Is it harmless? No. The argument for AI.

SO GOOD to see Australia ask questions about the harm done by the external consultants. It's some much money that's being leaked out of the public sector while making all decision making ever more obscure and turning each uni bland. May #UKHE join this inquiry NOW rather than 2 years down the line

When we reported terrorist posts and accounts, Musk’s platform left 93% of them on the site: https://goodlaw.social/220z

An important read and crucial last paragraph

A new Yale report confirms Gazprom and Rosneft are directly involved in the forced deportation of Ukrainian children. They are also running re-education camps. This is the textbook definition of genocide

"This is fixable. We just haven’t got people who care enough about other people to make the changes." Such a wonderful interview with Hannah Spencer. Really captures both my brilliant friend and colleague. 👇🏼 www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

"The senior government figure acknowledged that some hospital trusts had been slow to adopt Palantir’s software on the basis that they did not find it useful."

"As Sovereign Nations, we need not participate in the extractive colonial systems of generative AI and hyperscale data centers or their false, predatory economic promises at the expense of our lands and waters, communities and economies, security and sovereignty" nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/...

I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again. Universities are roughly 1000 years old. They predate most operating models including capitalism and have lasted for a reason. Installing insecure, helpless managers who ape business methods results in bad businesses, not good universities.

"Europe does not need permission to help Ukraine restore its borders. It needs the will. There is a basic rule that applies to nations as much as to people: pour your energy into the things you can affect," writes Academic director at the University of Amsterdam Andrew Chakhoyan in his op-ed.

American Airlines is charging $1000 per bus ticket to deter people from just taking a bus because the bus is meant to be an airplane replacement and not a bus. They want to trick you into thinking it’s a land airplane and not a bus. This is America.

but for me, it's symptomatic of the uncountably many ways in which this unforgivable, unjustifiable war inflicts damage, terror and exclusion on millions of people who just want to live in peace, collaboration and hope. I despair and rage for all the lives and lost futures this war has ended 4/4

It should have been the first day of a wonderful conference in Baghdad today - the first time ever that the International Association of Assyriology assembled in Iraq for its annual meeting. This conference was to be the culmination of 4 years of hard work by Iraqi and international colleagues. 1/4

Discworld QOTD, from Feet of Clay

Sharing this absolutely extraordinary and unfortunately very relevant ghazal by @gitaralleigh.bsky.social which features in her upcoming pamphlet, Empirical, published by us here at The Braag.

Starting work soon on a new 3 year book project. People keep asking me if I’ll use AI to help me? I would rather wear a hornet’s nest for underpants than ever delegate thought to a plagiarism engine

Also tried to emphasize, to close, that any institution of higher learning that's genuinely interested in remaining relevant, enduring through volatility, and growing its capacities —that is, leading— should be betting all the chips on reinvestment in the core functions of liberal arts education.

Neo-Nazi machete attack injures two teenagers in Berlin. One of the wounds went down to the bone. www.the-berliner.com/english-news... The attackers shouted Sieg Heil before running off.

Grammarly made an AI to sell shitty writing advice with famous writers' names on it. This bullshit illustrates a trend in the tech industry: shipping features as quickly as you can write lines of code, with no way to tell if they are any good until something breaks or someone sues you.

Bruce Springsteen: This past winter, federal troops brought death and terror to the streets of Minneapolis. Well, they picked the wrong city.

Gov. Walz: Don't ever mistake our kindness for weakness. We demand justice for Renee Goode and Alex Pretti. We demand justice for every single person who was hurt or traumatized.

I think we need to celebrate the death of Sora a bit more. This is a technology that, just MONTHS AGO, we were being told was going to literally destroy Hollywood and Disney was going to give them a BILLION DOLLARS and NONE OF THAT EVEN REMOTELY HAPPENED

I want a movie about the poor untenured archaeologist who has to cover Indiana Jones' teaching and do his marking while he fucks off to do 'fieldwork'.

"In other words, we have all been left on our own to jury rig workable pedagogical scaffolds while the educational edifice is being bulldozed around us. Individual responses will not suffice; collective action is necessary." 👇

Look how aggressively we are sanitizing Kushner's conflicts. The NYT described Kushner as "having business interests" in the Middle East. KUSHNER IS BEING DIRECTLY PAID TENS OF MILLIONS ANNUALLY BY MIDDLE EASTERN GOVERNMENTS

I am a forty year old white man so I can say this with my whole chest: I fucking love Bruce Springsteen

Kind of interesting that this piece published at The Guardian acknowledges that these changes are at least partly a response to the freak out during the 2024 Olympics about Imane Khelif, when the guy writing the piece played a role in fanning those 2024 flames. www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/m...

Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.

Tomorrow's Premium: The AI bubble is a mirage. In an analysis of every major AI data center project, the majority are theoretical or behind schedule. Their customers (AI startups) burn $3+ for every $1 of revenue. Here's $10 off annual. edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...

just this week: -- OpenAI killed Sora -- Disney subsequently cancelled its investment in OpenAI -- Wikipedia is now banning LLM-generated content ...tell me again how this is all "inevitable" and you have to "get on board or get left behind"?

The USA, Israel and Argentina voted against a UN resolution calling the slave trade a crime against humanity. Count on the racists to racist.

Wild ride as an educator going from 'don't use Wikipedia in your essay' to 'Wikipedia is one of the most reliable sites on the whole World Wide Web' in only about 15 years...

Every time I post about endometriosis and dare to make it, gender inclusive, I always get a lot of comments from people angry that I didn’t just say “women” And every time, I think about how Rowling has enough money to cure endometriosis forever. But she doesn’t actually give a fuck about women.

Agrigento, Sicilia. Valle dei templi, one of the most outstanding examples of Greater Greece art and #architecture.

neat www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/a...

"AI cannot coexist with education--it can only degrade it" YES OMG YES